How to Use Internal Notifications to Automate Administrative Tasks

October 6, 2017

What are internal notifications and how are they helpful? This guide answers those questions and provides examples of how internal notifications can be used to assist you with the day-to-day administrative tasks required to run your business.

Chapters

Internal notifications are email communications to you or your team members that help facilitate the behind-the-scenes, administrative tasks that keep your business running smoothly.

Internal notifications play a big role in enabling you to balance automation with the right amount of human touch by notifying you to bring in a human at precisely the right, most impactful moments during the customer journey. They help you optimize your interactions with contacts, thereby saving time and mental energy, so you can put more time and focus into the work you love.

They can help you remember significant dates and deadlines, stay on top of hot leads, promptly follow up with your most engaged contacts, get a support rep in touch with a customer at crucial moments, and more.

There are a few ways throughout the platform to set up various types of internal notifications. In this guide, we’ll explore them all.

Notification When a Form is Submitted

If you want to receive a notification every time a form is submitted, you can set this up in the Forms section of the platform when you go to create or edit a specific form.

If you prefer, you could set up form submission notifications using an automation instead (see Notification via Automation below).

Notification When Assigning A New Deal

When a new deal is created, you can have that deal automatically assigned to a member of your sales team through an internal notification.

To manage how deals are assigned, click on the gear icon next to the title of the pipeline, and select “Options” from the menu to access the Pipeline Options modal. In the Auto Deal Assignment section, choose how you would like assignments to be distributed.

Distributed based on value – This method will use a combination of round robin and deal value to ensure team members receive about the same amount of value over time. So if Sales Rep A is assigned a deal value of $100k and the next two deals are valued at $50k, then Sales Rep B would be assigned both of the deals valued at $50k.

Click the Save button once you’ve completed your selection. Now, navigate to your settings page to specify the types of deals notifications you would like to receive:

Click on the arrow button next to your avatar in the top right and select “My Settings.”

From the Settings menu on the left, click on “Notifications.” Here, you can specify whether you want a notification to go out when a deal is new, when a deal is updated, or both; as well as whether you want to receive notifications for any deal, or only the deals that you own:

Notification via Automation

You can configure an automation to notify you or a team member when just about any action, behavior or condition occurs. While automations are not your only means for setting up internal notifications within the platform (see above), they allow the greatest flexibility; you can be very specific with the actions that trigger, and the timing of, your notifications.

For instance, maybe you’d like to set up an internal notification to remind you when a client’s birthday is three days away so you can send a card in the mail.

To do this, navigate to Automations in the top menu and click on the green New Automation button to build from scratch.

Choose the “Date based” start trigger. You’ll see the following options:

In the first drop-down menu, select “Before,” then specify the number of days before the birthday you’d like to be notified (in this example we want three days’ notice). Then select the contact’s “Birthdate” from the next drop-down menu.

Specify the email address you want the notification to go to, the subject, and message of the email.

Note: To avoid deliverability issues, use a “To” address that is different from the “From” address.

Note: As you can see in the above animation, you can use personalization tags in your message. Simply type in the tag yourself (“%FULL_NAME%”) or click the Personalize Message button to select the tag you would like to use from a list.

Once you’re finished crafting your message, click “OK.” This automation is now complete! Click the Active button in the top right to activate it.

Here are a few other ideas for internal notifications you could use automations to send:

To send reminders to yourself for administrative tasks such as responding to an email that requires additional follow-up, or preparing for an upcoming lunch meeting

To receive notification when a contact subscribes or unsubscribes from a list

To receive notification when the status of a deal changes

Summary

These examples are only a starting point for what you might use internal notifications to accomplish in your day-to-day.

To brainstorm how you can best employ them for your own needs, consider what administrative tasks are most time intensive for you and your team. What do you repeatedly need reminding to do? What would you love to not have to think about so you can put your focus elsewhere?

What are some ways you have been using, or could envision using, internal notifications in your business? Leave a comment to let us know!

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